If some issues over jurisdiction can be solved, the House and Senate could potentially settle on a budget figure later this week for the bill.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said almost matter-of-factly that the House Agriculture Committee came back with an offer $8 billion to $10 billion above the baseline costs over 10 years. Grassley, a farm-bill conferee and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said he believed that the farm bill would eventually settle on a budget cost about $9 billion above the baseline.
Grassley also said staffers for the Senate Finance Committee had met with House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., to explain how the Finance Committee was putting together its tax package.
Later in the afternoon, DTN Washington correspondent Jerry Hagstrom reported that Peterson was having some concerns about the involvement of various committees in the farm bill. Given the use of tax credits and tax measures used in the House and Senate farm bills, there are fights over just what in the farm bill remains under control of the House and Senate agriculture committees and the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees.
"The focus on the numbers is wrong," Peterson said in an interview with Hagstrom. Last week, Peterson had said did not want to discuss anything else until there was agreement on the budget number.
Peterson specifically cited that he was concerned with a program to allow participants in the Conservation Reserve Program, which idles land for environmental and wildlife purposes, to take a tax credit instead of getting a federal payment. Peterson said the CRP tax credit is a "nonstarter" and a "deal breaker" on the House side.
The appropriations committees have always dealt with disaster aid, so Peterson said he does not feel so strongly about who controls the $5 billion disaster aid program that Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., have proposed. Control over permanent disaster is "up for discussion," Peterson said.
Peterson made similar comments at a meeting of a wide range of lobbyists with farm bill interests Tuesday. Peterson said he still believes the negotiators will work out these issues "in the next couple days" and "are making good progress" toward completing a bill by March 15.
Grassley said few policy issues can be resolved until the dollar figure is determined. Final figures on payment limits for commodity programs or income eligibility are not being discussed at the present time, Grassley said. Still, payment limits would likely be settled through informal talks instead of during official conference negotiation with the House. Changes to payment eligibility would likely not happen until a dollar figure on the farm bill is agreed to, he said.
"That's paramount to reach an agreement on that," Grassley said.
Other controversial items that will likely have to be settled through negotiations include the competition provisions for livestock in the Senate farm bill. Another proposal generating controversy and needing negotiations is the Bush administration's position that farmers should have to give up beneficial interest of their commodity when they lock in a price for a loan-deficiency payment, Grassley said.
One interesting aspect of what Grassley said is that he does not expect key issues such as the payment limits would be debated in an open, formal conference talks. Grassley did not think any major issues would actually be aired in actual conference discusssions.
